Hi Everyone,
I configured TF2 to run before the SDK came out so I?ve had a little bit of experience I?d like to share with you.
TF2 Mapping Good News and Bad news
Good news ? It?s just like 1.6 and the rest of Source ? making rooms, brushes, etc.
Good/Bad News ? combined
Props are almost everything in this game = make a room, world etc and fill it with props. With the exception of some common terrain ? I?ve seen some maps made up completely of props.
Bad News
TF2 entities are the most complicated entities that you?ll come across.
1 - To get anything to happen like a cabinet that gives you health, ammo ? you have to get a prop_dynamic then make an entity ? trigger - to make it work ? have posted how to do it somewhere else here. ? Basically the entire game works this way ? triggers run the props. Here?s how to do the cabinet thing:
http://twhl.co.za/forums.php?pgt=1&action=viewthread&id=14582&pg=12 ? Entities ? OMG ? I?ve been busting my brain trying to figure out how some of them work even though I have decompiled some other maps to see how they?ve done it. Even if you do this, some of them are clear as mud.
Here?s the jist of how they work ? Since I?m new to source mapping I?m not sure if this is an across the board thing or TF2 specific ? I will just give what I have seen re the TF2 but typing from work so trying to go from memory.
Make an entity ? I don?t care what type and press alt+enter to open properties
This will give you the main properties window ? you can go up and down and make them whatever you like.
Look at the top you will see tabs ? 1 to get you back to the one you?ve just opened, input/out tabs, flags and I think one more.
Flags ? each is specific for that entity ? if you select something here and change the entity type, you will have to come back to this tab and uncheck all the entities that are ??? or it may crash your game.
Input/output tabs ? everything you do in the main window of your entity can be made to be conditional ? you can get into some heavy duty programming here ? and remember when you use these and tie them to other entites ? you may also have to go back to those other entities and change all of them or else your game may crash ? then again you may be able to operate them without changes ? you won?t know until you compile and run.
Lights Entities ? pretty standard however ? I?m getting dramatic light changes as I run around the map ? see my post ? I updated it with some new screenshots and am still trying to figure out what is going on. Good luck with yours.
http://twhl.co.za/forums.php?pgt=1&action=viewthread&id=14627&pg=1Entity Placement ? these are the ones that control gameplay (what happens when all caps captured, overtime, etc), water effect, etc. These entities need to be placed in an area that no player can touch ? if they get touched TF2 will crash. The best thing you could probably do is to put a clip box around them to guarantee that they can?t be touched ? for example ? you make your map one way but someone puts the map onto a low grav server allowing people to jump way up where they wouldn?t normally go ? no clip box = server crashes as so as someone touches an entity.
If making a TF2 Map make sure you think about the low grav option and make sure players can?t get off the map to parts where they shouldn?t be. Func_Walls may no be strong enough to keep a player from going through it if that player is being launched off of a conveyor whose speed is set at 10000. Make them solid walls to stop the player.
You can also have goldfish swimming around in your maps - look for that post too.
Well, I hope that helps you out a bit ? good luck with the Capture points ? I crashed my TF2 twenty times before I got them working ? I still have 1 that has bad input/output ? but they still work now
im just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction? i have downloaded worldcraftv3.3 but in the setup it is only speaking about half-life map making... nothing about HL2 etc... and i cant find some of the files it wants because i have halflife source, not the origional... if anyone knows a good setup and get started tutorial (even if it is just for HL2 cause i know TF2 it pretty recent) cheers in advance for any help 
just gotta start figuring out about all the entities that go into a tf2 map... wanting to make a capture point one... wish me luck 